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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Hm. So, I guess it's been a while. Some of you might remember me, but for those who don't, let me briefly re-introduce myself before jumping back into the thick of things. I'm Ryan and I was invited by Katie last year to participate in the discussion on this blog from the male perspective. Well, at least from the bitter liberal male perspective. Anyway, I'm from Providence, Rhode Island, I'm turning 23 in a few weeks, and I tell bartenders and people on airplanes that I'm a screenwriter, but I've never actually sold a script (though I did act in a friend's short film, but we won't speak of that again). Fingers crossed that that fact changes this year. Anyway, on to the topic at hand.

In the year 2006, British comedian Sascha Baron Cohen brought the character Borat from the HBO series Da Ali G Show to movie theaters. The film was subsequently ruined by overzealous frat boys walking around drunkenly quoting the film, but it was a fearless (and quite hilarious) look at how ass-backwards this country is when it comes to many topics, with racism taking the forefront.

Now Cohen has turned to the last of his characters to make it to the big screen (though no one really remembers Ali G In Da House). Bruno (a film in the same mockumentary style, but from the perspective of a gay Austrian fashion icon) is set for release on July 10th of this year and it has already caused a controversy. As first reported on the news and blog site The Daily Beast, Bruno has received a rating of NC-17 from the Motion Picture Association of America, the same people who told my parents not to let me see the South Park movie when I was thirteen.

Briefly, for those who are unfamiliar with the MPAA, they're a volunteer group of people who sit in a room, watch movies a couple of months before its release, then decide whether it should be rated G, PG, PG-13, or R. However, every once in a while, a film surpasses those ratings and winds up with an NC-17, meaning no children under seventeen are allowed into the theater. Period. Even if their college-aged cousin is with them. The big deal here is that when a film receives that rating, it becomes an uphill battle for the film to actually make money. A quick comparison: the highest grossing film with an NC-17 rating is campfest Showgirls, which made $20.3 million. The highest grossing R-rated film of all time is Biblical snuff film The Passion of the Christ, which made $370.8 million.

Bruno has received this rating in regards to its supposed graphic sexual content. From the original post on The Daily Beast (beware mild spoilers):

Among the objectionable scenes is one in which two naked men attempt oral sex in a hot tub, while one of them holds a baby. In another, Bruno—a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen—appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.

Knowing Cohen's style of comedy, I can't imagine any of those scenes go on for more than a few moments for fear of being exploitative, but this isn't the first time the MPAA has forced a film to cut some of its content to receive an R-rating. But that's been well documented already, so I won't get into that.

What I will get into, however, is the MPAA's willingness to automatically comdemn anything more graphic than a gay kiss in a film. The 2005 film Bad Education by Spanish auteur Pedro Almadóvar, in which male actor Gael García Bernal plays multiple roles, one of whom is a woman who performs oral sex on a man. The scene lasts a whole two seconds and yet the film was rated NC-17 for "a scene of explicit sexual content."

So we've gotten over the fact that Milk notwithstanding, gay sex is largely taboo to the MPAA, the members of which to this day remains a secret (to be fair, Milk wasn't exactly graphic either). So you would figure a group as staunch and as moral as that would certainly disapprove of a horror film with a prolonged rape and torture sequence that was a remake of a film infamous for the same thing, right? Guess not.

Can someone tell me in what world is it okay for three degenerates to brutalize and rape two teenage girls for ten minutes straight (and eventually kill one of them), but two men having sex on camera for a fraction of that time just goes too darn far? A friend of mine tried to argue that the scene was done in such a way as to make the villains more villainous. Sorry, but it's just exploitative and mean-spirited. Plain and simple.

The MPAA has a longstanding issue with letting countless horror, action, and just about every other genre of films that depict brutal violence against women get away without a scratch, while simultaneously condemning films based on homosexual content, or even excessive female nudity.

Knee-jerk reaction on my part? No. As someone who follows the film industry like my life depended on it (if I had a life, that is), this is just another infuriating entry on the long list of things the MPAA has done that causes me more stress than it should. Eventually, homosexuality will become such a common thing (let's give it twenty years) that these kinds of things probably won't matter much in the future. But in a world where violence against women is so commonplace in itself, I get the feeling we're going to be seeing plenty of films like The Last House on the Left in that same future come out highly recommended by the people I work with and the idiot at the movie theater who tried to convince me to see that instead of Sunshine Cleaning.

So until the MPAA pulls its collective head out of its ass, expect more of these entries from me as more situations like this arise, as well as me pointing out hipocrisy on how women are treated in film and the industry itself in general. And I encourage you to check out the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated for more examples along the same lines. An interesting note, the film was ironically rated NC-17 because it featured scenes from other films with the same rating. Go figure.

It's good to be back posting here. I hope to contribute on a weekly basis, and I'll be focusing mainly on the entertainment industry and other medias, but I'll veer off into other territories if I discover something appropriate for this blog. Either way, thanks to Amelia and Katie and the other bloggers for having me back and you'll be hearing from me very soon!

12 comments:

You know, when you first mentioned Borat, I wasn't sure what to think about the rest of the post because I have never seen the movie, but from the way I hear people talk about it, it seemed really offensive. Hearing your take on it, though, put me more at ease. So thanks for that.

I have always had a problem with movie ratings. It's always been more of a feeling that any sort of analysis on my part,but you clearly illustrate some of the issues with the system.

Do you have any ideas for how to fix this? Or will ratings systems always be subject to the flaws and prejudices of human beings? (Just curious!)

What Borat did was use an outlandishly offensive character from the Middle East, an area of the world that Americans clearly have many prejudices against, have him do and say ridiculous things, then juxtapose him against a bunch of Americans to show that there are plenty of people in this country who are just as socially backwards as the stereotypes from those countries. It pushes the limits of good taste, of course, but it's funny enough to get away with it. So rent it. :)

The best way to fix the issue is to get rid of the MPAA altogether. That clearly isn't going to happen, though, so the next best thing would be to get rid of the NC-17 rating. It's essentially an infringement on free speech. Studios are scared to death of releasing a film with that rating because it's box office death. As such, they're forced to censor their works.

The ratings system will always be around, unfortunately, and they'll always, always, always be victims of subjection. I could go on about this for hours, but frankly, I'm just shocked at some of the movies that pass for PG-13, let alone R. The ratings system is directly proportional to American culture, so what's accepted as the norm in America will likely slip through much easier.

I agree that double standards in the movie industry are reprehensible (they're reprehensible irrespective of context), and it does sound like Bruno shouldn't have received the NC-17 rating, but I would like to point out briefly that I believe you've unintentionally fallen prey to the correlation = causation fallacy. This is what I'm talking about: "The big deal here is that when a film receives that rating, it becomes an uphill battle for the film to actually make money. A quick comparison: the highest grossing film with an NC-17 rating is campfest Showgirls, which made $20.3 million. The highest grossing R-rated film of all time is Biblical snuff film The Passion of the Christ, which made $370.8 million." There are other equally plausible explanations for Showgirls' lack of success (like that it was a bad movie and therefore deserved to do poorly at the box office...), and Passion of the Christ, well, we all know why that particular movie was a smash hit (but I'm afraid it would sound too anti-religionist to expound, so I'll just stop there).

"...the next best thing would be to get rid of the NC-17 rating. It's essentially an infringement on free speech."

I don't see how this is possible considering that censoring a movie to fit within certain parameters is a voluntary action, not a mandatory one. No one is saying "you're not allowed to release this movie", they're saying that if you want to release it, it's going to carry a rating that reflects the content so that moviegoers will be equipped to make informed choices about the kinds of movies they want to see. I'm glad that we have a ratings system, as imperfect as it may be at times, because I do use these guidelines when selecting the movies I want to see. I'm not dismissing your grievance with the MPAA as invalid or trivial or anything of the sort, so please don't get me wrong. I just think your proposed solutions seem a little drastic.

And who knows...maybe Bruno is more sexually graphic than you think and it really does deserve the NC-17 rating. I couldn't find a single comprehensive explanation for the rating anywhere online, so I'm assuming that only limited details about the movie have been released at this time.

In all truthfulness, I wish the ratings system was a bit more stringent. I think sexual violence should get an automatic NC-17 rating (though I'm wondering why any sane person would even want to see a movie containing sexual violence...).

No, wait, sorry, I think I missed your point about the NC-17 rating being the kiss of box office death. You know, I think I'm going to have to take issue with that argument, as well. In order to earn a NC-17 rating, a movie (usually) has to contain extremely sexual or violent content, and since this type of rating effectively says "no kids allowed", that's going to automatically limit the number of movie goers, which reduces the earning potential of the film. The rating isn't limiting its earning potential, it's that the movie's content does not appeal to, or is not suitable for, a broader range of movie goers, which means fewer people are going to see it.

The MPAA isn't a government body. I get tired of people always crying "Free speech, free speech, free speech!".

You are only protected from the government attempting to censor your speech.

Not private entities.

NC-17 is a necessary rating, because there are movies that people under the age of 17 do not need to see. This is one of them.

Mentioning Zack and Miri is a bit disingenuous, because Kevin Smith repeatedly had to resubmit that movie to the MPAA in order to secure an "R" instead of NC-17. So it's not "Oh, it's straight, so it's a-okay!".

I'd just like to see your logic as to why you think kids need to see movies such as this.

My overall, and not entirely well-educated, feeling about the ratings system, and a point that I think Ryan was trying to illustrate in his post (correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan) is that the system is subject to American cultural values and those of the people who view the movies.

This could easily mean that similar movies might not get the same rating all the time, depending on the cultural atmosphere (and perhaps a difference between hetero/homosexual sex, for example). The fact that it seems like movies might get different ratings based on rather minute differences makes me think that in a way, yes, it is an infringement upon free speech. Because the MPAA does have the power to help decide how well a movie will do, and therefore can make people chose censorship out of economic interests.

The fact that the system seems so subjective makes it sound ineffective in my opinion, and it also lends itself to the prejudice, racism, and sexism that are still a part of our culture.

Great article. The comments seemed interesting but I believe that Ryan got one error factually wrong. Borat was a character NOT based in the Middle East but from Central Asia. He played a character from Kazakhstan, it is in no way part of the Middle East.

Mira, you're right. Sorry I missed that one. It was a bit late when I wrote this. And Amelia, yes, you are correct. So I won't touch upon that further.

"I'd just like to see your logic as to why you think kids need to see movies such as this."

Because I want a giant army of gay children to help me take down Fox News. Obviously.

"Mentioning Zack and Miri is a bit disingenuous, because Kevin Smith repeatedly had to resubmit that movie to the MPAA in order to secure an "R" instead of NC-17. So it's not "Oh, it's straight, so it's a-okay!"."

The film was edited twice, yes. But to call it a disingenuous example? That's a bit of a stretch on your part. Especially considering you don't know exactly what was cut. I'm just trying to figure out why a woman wearing a strap-on and having sex with a man is any worse than one guy performing oral sex on another guy.

And it's pretty disingenuous for you to insinuate that people "need" to see movies. Or that there are certain movies kids don't "need" to see. When was the last time anyone actually "needed" to see a movie or content in a movie? That whole free speech thing ties into the free will idea, too. Free will that allows people to differentiate between the movies they want to see or don't want to see.

"The fact that the system seems so subjective makes it sound ineffective in my opinion, and it also lends itself to the prejudice, racism, and sexism that are still a part of our culture.

Thoughts?"

The system grades movies on the degree of sexuality/violence a movie contains, so theoretically factors like gender, race, or sexual orientation should have absolutely zero influence on assigned ratings. If Bruno has been unfairly given an NC-17 rating due to homosexual content, then that's an abuse of the system that needs to be addressed (obviously).

I would like to see Anonymous's logic that a statement recommending the eradication of a rating which is applied in a discriminatory way is in any way equivalent to stating that kids "need" to see a movie.

No, the rating is not an infringement on freedom of speech, but it is helping to uphold a societal standard of violence against women being considered more acceptable for a wider audience than homosexual sex.

To use Anonymous's own tortured logic, that would mean that Anonymous is arguing that kids need to see violent rapes and murders of women, but gay sex is just too obscene.

"The system grades movies on the degree of sexuality/violence a movie contains, so theoretically factors like gender, race, or sexual orientation should have absolutely zero influence on assigned ratings. If Bruno has been unfairly given an NC-17 rating due to homosexual content, then that's an abuse of the system that needs to be addressed (obviously)."

They clearly do, though. That's the problem. The system is broken. And what Dori said is another perfect example of how and why it should be completely redesigned (in my own perfect world, completely done away with).

but it is helping to uphold a societal standard of violence against women being considered more acceptable for a wider audience than homosexual sex.

You must be joking. Violence against women is the most biased content a movie can contain, and the fastest ticket to a rating you didn't want.

Star Wars Episode III pulled a PG-13 rating because of Anakin using the force to choke his wife.

A movie series with countless (male) dismemberments, violence, force chokings of male characters, and action, had always maintained a PG rating until one 10 second instance of violence involving a female.

Hell, the original story had her dying as a result of said actions, instead of "losing the will to live".

Why was it changed? Death as the result of spousal abuse = R rating.

Nice, that you can sever a man's limbs, cut a man in half, etc, and hold a PG, but violence involving a woman is instant an upped rating.

To use Anonymous's own tortured logic, that would mean that Anonymous is arguing that kids need to see violent rapes and murders of women, but gay sex is just too obscene.

Men are killed/beaten in movies far more often than women.

(in my own perfect world, completely done away with).

Which is a stupid idea. The rating is also used so people seeing the movie know what they're getting into. People might not want to take certain people to movies that are inappropriate for them.